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013 - Of Queens' Gardens Part 3 · Sesame and Lilies

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  Speaker 1: Section thirteen of Sesame M. Lili's revised and enlarged edition
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  Speaker 1: by John Ruskin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Oxen Handler of Queen's Gardens, Part three two.
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  Speaker 1: I have been trying thus far to show you what
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  Speaker 1: should be the place and what the power of women.
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  Speaker 1: Now secondly we ask what kind of education is to
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  Speaker 1: fit her for these? And if you indeed think this
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  Speaker 1: a true conception of her office and dignity, it will
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  Speaker 1: not be difficult to trace the course of education which
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  Speaker 1: would fit her for the one, and raise her to
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  Speaker 1: the other. The first of our duties to her, No
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  Speaker 1: thoughtful persons now doubt this is to secure for her
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  Speaker 1: such physical training and exercise as may confirm her health
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  Speaker 1: and perfect her beauty, the highest refinement of that beauty
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  Speaker 1: being unattainable without splendor of activity and of delicate strength.
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  Speaker 1: To perfect her beauty, I say, and increase its power.
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  Speaker 1: It cannot be too powerful, nor shed its sacred light
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  Speaker 1: too far. Only remember that all physical freedom is vain
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  Speaker 1: to produce beauty without a corresponding freedom of heart. There
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  Speaker 1: are two passages of that poet who is distinguished. It
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  Speaker 1: seems to me from all others, not by power, but
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  Speaker 1: by exquisite rightness, which point you to the source, and
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  Speaker 1: describe to you in a few syllables the completion of
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  Speaker 1: womanly beauty. I will read the introductory stanzas, but the
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  Speaker 1: last is the one I wish you specially to notice.
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  Speaker 1: Quote three years she grew in sun and shower. Then
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  Speaker 1: nature said, a lovelier flower on earth was never sown.
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  Speaker 1: This child, I, to myself will take. She shall be mine,
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  Speaker 1: and I will make a lady of my own. Myself
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  Speaker 1: will to my darling be both law and impulse. And
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  Speaker 1: with me the girl in rock and plain, in earth
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  Speaker 1: and heaven, in glade and bower, shall feel an overseeing
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  Speaker 1: power to kindle or restrain the flow in clouds. Their
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  Speaker 1: states shall lend to her. For her the willow bend,
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  Speaker 1: nor shall she fail to see, even in the motions
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  Speaker 1: of the storm. Grace that shall mold the maiden's form
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  Speaker 1: by silent sympathy and vital feelings of delight, shall rear
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  Speaker 1: her form to stately height. Her virgin bosoms swell such
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  Speaker 1: thoughts to Lucy I will give while she and I
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  Speaker 1: together live here in this happy dell. Unquote quote vital
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  Speaker 1: feelings of delight unquote observe there are deadly feelings of delight,
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  Speaker 1: but the natural ones are vital, necessary to vary life,
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  Speaker 1: and they must be feelings of delight if they are
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  Speaker 1: to be vital. Do not think you can make a
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  Speaker 1: girl lovely if you do not make her happy. There
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  Speaker 1: is not one restraint you put on good girl's nature.
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  Speaker 1: There is not one check you give to her instincts
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  Speaker 1: of affection or of effort which will not be indelibly
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  Speaker 1: written on her features with a hardness which is all
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  Speaker 1: the more painful because it takes away the brightness from
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  Speaker 1: the eyes of innocence and the charm from the brow
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  Speaker 1: of virtue. This for the means. Now note the end
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  Speaker 1: take from the same poet in two lines, a perfect
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  Speaker 1: description of womanly beauty. Quote. A countenance in which did
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  Speaker 1: meet sweet records promises as sweet quote. The perfect loveliness
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  Speaker 1: of a woman's countenance can only consist in that majestic
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  Speaker 1: piece which is founded in the memory of happy and
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  Speaker 1: useful years, full of sweet records. And from the joining
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  Speaker 1: of this with that yet more majestic childishness, which is
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  Speaker 1: still full of change and promise, opening always modest at
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  Speaker 1: once and bright with hope of better things to be
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  Speaker 1: won and to be bestowed. There is no old age
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  Speaker 1: where there is still that promise. It is eternal youth.
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  Speaker 1: Thus then you have first to mold her physical frame,
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  Speaker 1: and then, as the strength she gains, will permit you
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  Speaker 1: to fill and temper her mind with all knowledge and
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  Speaker 1: thoughts which tend to confirm its natural instincts of justice
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  Speaker 1: and refine its natural tact of love. All such knowledge
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  Speaker 1: should be given her as may enable her to understand
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  Speaker 1: and even to aid the work of men. And yet
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  Speaker 1: it should be given not as knowledge, not as if
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  Speaker 1: it were or could be, for her an object to know,
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  Speaker 1: but only to feel and to judge. It is of
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  Speaker 1: no moment as a matter of pride or perfectness in
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  Speaker 1: her whether she knows many languages or one. But it
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  Speaker 1: is of the utmost that she should be able to
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  Speaker 1: show kindness to a stranger and to understand the sweetness
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  Speaker 1: of a stranger's tongue. It is of no moment to
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  Speaker 1: her own worth or dignity that she should be acquainted
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  Speaker 1: with this science or that. But it is of the
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  Speaker 1: highest that she should be trained in habits of accurate thought,
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  Speaker 1: that she should understand the meaning, the inevitableness and the
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  Speaker 1: loveliness of natural life laws, and follow at least some
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  Speaker 1: one path of scientific attainment as far as to the
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  Speaker 1: threshold of that bitter valley of humiliation into which only
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  Speaker 1: the wisest and bravest of men can descend, owning themselves
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  Speaker 1: forever children gathering pebbles on a boundless shore. It is
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  Speaker 1: of little consequence how many positions of cities she knows,
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  Speaker 1: or how many dates of events, or how many names
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  Speaker 1: of celebrated persons. It is not the object of education
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  Speaker 1: to turn a woman into a dictionary. But it is
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  Speaker 1: deeply necessary that she should be taught to enter, with
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  Speaker 1: her whole personality into the history she reads, to picture
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  Speaker 1: the passages of it vitally in her own bright imagination,
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  Speaker 1: to apprehend with her fine instincts the pathetic circumstances and
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  Speaker 1: dramatic relations which the historian too often only eclipses by
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  Speaker 1: his reasoning and disconnects by his arrangement. It is for
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  Speaker 1: her or to trace the hidden equities of divine reward,
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  Speaker 1: and catch sight through the darkness of the fateful threads
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  Speaker 1: of woven fire that connect error with its retribution. But
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  Speaker 1: chiefly of all, she is to be taught to extend
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  Speaker 1: the limits of her sympathy with respect to that history
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  Speaker 1: which is being forever determined as the moments pass in
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  Speaker 1: which she draws her peaceful breath, and to the contemporary calamity, which,
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  Speaker 1: were it but rightly mourned by her, would recur no more. Hereafter,
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  Speaker 1: she is to exercise herself in imagining what would be
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  Speaker 1: the effects upon her mind and conduct if she were
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  Speaker 1: daily brought into the presence of the suffering, which is
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  Speaker 1: not the less real because shut from her sight. She
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  Speaker 1: is to be taught somewhat to understand the nothingness of
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  Speaker 1: the proportion which that little world in which she lives
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  Speaker 1: and loves bears to the world in which God lives
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  Speaker 1: and loves. And solemnly she is to be taught to
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  Speaker 1: strive that her thoughts of piety may not be feeble
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  Speaker 1: in proportion to the number they embrace, nor her prayer
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  Speaker 1: more languid than it is for the momentary relief from
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  Speaker 1: pain of her husband or her child, when it is
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  Speaker 1: uttered for the multitudes of those who have none to
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  Speaker 1: love them, and is quote for all who are desolate
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  Speaker 1: and oppressed unquote. Thus far I think I have had
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  Speaker 1: your concurrence, perhaps you will not be with me in
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  Speaker 1: what I believe is most needful for me to say,
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  Speaker 1: there is one dangerous science for women, one which let them,
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  Speaker 1: indeed beware how they profanely touch that of theology. Strange
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  Speaker 1: and miserably strange, that while they are modest enough to
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  Speaker 1: doubt their powers and pause at the threshold of sciences
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  Speaker 1: where every step is demonstrable and sure, they will plunge
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  Speaker 1: headlong and without one thought of competency, into that science
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  Speaker 1: in which the greatest men have trembled and the wisest erred. Strange,
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  Speaker 1: that they will complacently and pridefully bind up whatever vice
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  Speaker 1: or folly there is in them, whatever arrogance, petulance, or
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  Speaker 1: blind incomprehensiveness, into one bitter bundle of consecrated myrrh. Strange
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  Speaker 1: in creatures born to be love visible, that where they
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  Speaker 1: can no least, they will condemn first and think to
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  Speaker 1: recommend themselves to their master by scrambling up the steps
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  Speaker 1: of his judgment throne, to divide it with him. Most
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  Speaker 1: strange that they should think they were led by the
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  Speaker 1: spirit of the comforter into habits of mind which have
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  Speaker 1: become in them the unmixed elements of home discomfort, and
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  Speaker 1: that they dare to turn the household gods of Christianity
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  Speaker 1: into ugly idols of their own spiritual dolls, for them
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  Speaker 1: to dress according to their caprice, and from which their
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  Speaker 1: husbands must turn away in grieved contempt, lest they should
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  Speaker 1: be shrieked at for breaking them. I believe, then, with
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  Speaker 1: this exception, that a girl's education should be nearly, in
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  Speaker 1: its coarse and material of study, the same as a boy's,
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  Speaker 1: but quite differently directed. A woman in any rank of
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  Speaker 1: life ought to know whatever her husband is likely to know,
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  Speaker 1: but to know it in a different way. His command
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  Speaker 1: of it should be foundational and progressive, hers general and accomplished,
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  Speaker 1: for daily and helpful use. But not that it would
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  Speaker 1: often be wiser in men to learn things in a
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  Speaker 1: womanly sort of way for present use, and to seek
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  Speaker 1: for the discipline and training of their mental powers in
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  Speaker 1: such branches of study as will be afterwards fittest for
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  Speaker 1: social service. But speaking broadly, a man ought to know
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  Speaker 1: any language or science he learns thoroughly, while a woman
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  Speaker 1: ought to know the same language or science only so
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  Speaker 1: far as may enable her to sympathize in her husband's pleasures,
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  Speaker 1: and in those of his best friends, yet observed with
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  Speaker 1: exquisite accuracy as far as she reaches. There is a
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  Speaker 1: wide difference between elementary knowledge and superficial knowledge, between a
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  Speaker 1: firm beginning and a feeble smattering. A woman may always
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  Speaker 1: help her husband by what she knows, however little by
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  Speaker 1: what she half knows, or may she will only tease him.
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  Speaker 1: And indeed, if there were to be any difference between
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  Speaker 1: a girl's education and a boy's, I should say that
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  Speaker 1: of the two, the girl should be earlier led, as
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  Speaker 1: her intellect ripens faster into deep and serious subjects, and
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  Speaker 1: that her range of literature should be not more but
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  Speaker 1: less frivolous, calculated, to add the qualities of patience and
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  Speaker 1: seriousness to her natural poignancy of thought and quickness of wit,
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  Speaker 1: and also to keep her in a lofty and pure
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  Speaker 1: element of thought. I enter not now into any question
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  Speaker 1: of choice of books. Only be sure that her books
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  Speaker 1: are not heaped up in her lap as they fall
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  Speaker 1: out of the package of the circulating library, wet with
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  Speaker 1: the last and lightest spray of the fountain of folly,
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  Speaker 1: or even of the fountain of wit. For with respect
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  Speaker 1: to that sore temptation of novel reading. It is not
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  Speaker 1: the badness of a novel that we should dread, but
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  Speaker 1: its overwrought interest. The weakest romance is not so stupefying
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  Speaker 1: as the lower forms of religious exciting literature, and the
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  Speaker 1: worst romance is not so corrupting as false history, false philosophy,
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  Speaker 1: or of false political essays. But the best romance becomes
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  Speaker 1: dangerous if, by its excitement it renders the ordinary course
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  Speaker 1: of life uninteresting and increases the morbid thirst for useless
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  Speaker 1: acquaintance with scenes in which we shall never be called
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  Speaker 1: upon to act. I speak therefore, of good novels only,
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  Speaker 1: and our modern literature is particularly rich in types of
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  Speaker 1: such well read. Indeed, these books have serious use, being
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  Speaker 1: nothing less than treatises on moral anatomy and chemistry, studies
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  Speaker 1: of human nature in the elements of it. But I
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  Speaker 1: attach little weight to this function. They are hardly ever
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  Speaker 1: read with earnestness enough to permit them to fulfill it.
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  Speaker 1: The utmost they usually do is to enlarge somewhat the
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  Speaker 1: charity of a kind reader or the bitterness of a
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  Speaker 1: malicious one, for each will gather from the novel food
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  Speaker 1: for her own disposition. Those who are naturally proud and
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  Speaker 1: envious will learn from Thackeray to despise humanity, those who
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  Speaker 1: are naturally gentle to pity it, those who are naturally
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  Speaker 1: shallow to laugh at it. So also there might be
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  Speaker 1: a serviceable power in novels to bring before us, in
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  Speaker 1: vividness a human truth which we had before dimly conceived.
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  Speaker 1: But the temptation to picturesqueness of statement is so great
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  Speaker 1: that often the best writers of fiction cannot resist it,
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  Speaker 1: and our views are rendered so violent and one sided
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  Speaker 1: that their vitality is rather a harm than good. Without, however,
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  Speaker 1: venturing here on any attempt at decision how much novel
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  Speaker 1: reading should be allowed, let me at least clearly assert this,
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  Speaker 1: that whether novels or poetry or history be read, they
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  Speaker 1: should be chosen not for what is out of them,
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  Speaker 1: but for what is in them. The chance and scattered
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  Speaker 1: evil that may here and there haunt or hide itself
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  Speaker 1: in a powerful book never does any harm to a
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  Speaker 1: noble girl. But the emptiness of an author oppresses her,
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  Speaker 1: and his amiable folly degrades her. And if she can
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  Speaker 1: have access to a good library of old and classical books,
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  Speaker 1: there need be no choosing at all, Keep the modern
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  Speaker 1: magazine and novel out of your girl's way, Turn her
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  Speaker 1: loose into the old library every wet day, and let
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  Speaker 1: her alone. She will find what is good for her.
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  Speaker 1: You cannot, for there is just this difference between the
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  Speaker 1: making of a girl's character and a boy's. You may
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  Speaker 1: chisel a boy into shape as you would a rock,
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  Speaker 1: or hammer him into it if he be of a
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  Speaker 1: better kind, as you would a piece of bronze. But
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  Speaker 1: you cannot hammer a girl into anything. She grows as
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  Speaker 1: a flower does. She will wither without sun. She will
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  Speaker 1: decay in her sheath as the narcissus does. If you
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  Speaker 1: do not give her air enough. She may fall and
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  Speaker 1: defile her head in dust if you leave her without
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  Speaker 1: help at some moments of her life. But you cannot.
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  Speaker 1: She must take her own fair form and wigh if
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  Speaker 1: she take any and in mind as in body must
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  Speaker 1: have always quote her household motions light and free, and
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  Speaker 1: steps of virgin liberty. Unquote. Let her loose in the library.
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  Speaker 1: I say, as you do a fawn in a field.
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  Speaker 1: It knows the bad weeds twenty times better than you,
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  Speaker 1: and the good ones too, and will eat some bitter
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  Speaker 1: and prickly ones good for it, which you had not
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  Speaker 1: the slightest thought were good. End of Section thirteen.